Стихи и эссе

     Our hunting fathers told the story
     Of the sadness of the creatures,
     Pitied the limits and the lack
     Set in their finished features;
     Saw in the lion's intolerant look,
     Behind the quarry's dying glare,
     Love raging for, the personal glory
     That reason's gift would add,
     The liberal appetite and power,
     The rightness of a god.

     Who, nurtured in that fine tradition,

     Predicted the result,
     Guessed Love by nature suited to
     The intricate ways of guilt,
     That human ligaments could so
     His southern gestures modify
     And make it his mature ambition
     To think no thought but ours,
     To hunger, work illegally,
     And be anonymous?

1934

On This Island

     Look, stranger, on this island now
     The leaping light for your delight discovers,
     Stand stable here
     And silent be,
     That through the channels of the ear
     May wander like a river
     The swaying sound of the sea.

     Here at a small field's ending pause

     Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges
     Oppose the pluck
     And knock of the tide,
     And the shingle scrambles after the suck —
     — ing surf, and a gull lodges
     A moment on its sheer side.

     Far off like floating seeds the ships

     Diverge on urgent voluntary errands,
     And this full view
     Indeed may enter
     And move in memory as now these clouds do,
     That pass the harbour mirror
     And all the summer through the water saunter.

1935

"As I Walked Out One Evening"